


Family Favor

by Samarkand12



Series: The Heterodyne's Girl [1]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Female Character, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-08 02:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20283016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samarkand12/pseuds/Samarkand12
Summary: Well, the Heterodyne Girl is supposed to marry the Storm King....but prophecies don't often go to plan, with Heterodynes.





	Family Favor

"So, the library?" Agatha asked. "Back over the bridge?"

"Oh, my, no, this way," the Castle's said. "By the by, may I ask if you have a boyfriend? Perhaps this stalwart man behind you."

"Oh, hell no," Moloch said. "I prefer my working bits not spread across the Carpathians."

"Ah, then the rather feisty Wulfenbach lad ranting outside my gates?" the Castle continued. "A fine choice. The Wulfenbachs have always had penchant for, hehehehehe, oversized machinery."

"I have no idea what you are insinuating--" Agatha's cheeks went beet-red.

"I mean, that Castle Wulfenbach of Klaus'." The Castle snickered. "What are we trying to say here, mmm?"

"I don't have a boyfriend," Agatha said.

"Really? No consort? No swain?" The Castle asked.

Agatha was about to answer when she was crushed in a tight embrace.

"Agatha! Damn you, never try to leave me behind again!" Lips pressed tight against hers. "I swear, I will poison you for a week if you try again."

"Ah." The Castle's smug tone...wavered. "Ahhhhhhhhhh."

"So," Agatha said, as Seffie took her hand, "this may take a bit of explanation..."

++++

"It is spring," Grandm_è_re said. "You are a blossoming flower in the City of Lightning. You should take a lover."

"Grandmamma, please, there is no need for a _grand spectacle_." Blue eyes stared across the rim of a teacup. "Do you wish the target socially or physically dead at the end?"

"Dear, I am speaking of a a proper tryst for your sake." Grandm_è_re sipped her tea. "You need to purge yourself of this obsession with the Baron's heir. It was all quite amusing when he was merely Hofzaller. The intelligence you gathered from his mail provided us with valuable profiling data. But continuing it risks _complications._"

"Ah." Seffie idly selected a shortbread fleur-de-lis from the biscuit plate. "Uncle Junius has been objecting, I suppose. Or my brother."

"It matters not." Grandm_è_re suddenly poked Seffie in the stomach with her cane. "You are mooning over a boy who will eventually disposed of.It is unhealthy both in mind and of the _corps_, should that cause the council to question your loyalty."

"Yes, grandmamma." Seffie sighed. "I simply cannot face choosing among the cousins. None of the men in society really attract of late."

"Why not Colette?" Grandm_è_re asked. 

"That would ruin things," Seffie said. "We are perfect _amis-adversaires_."

"I give you a week," Grandm_è_re announced. "Also, cease using the Smoke Knights to murder any rivals in the scientific community to the Wulfenbach heir's work on heavier-than-air flight. It is a waste of precious resources."

"Of course." Seffie smiled. "You have my best interests at heart."

Seffie waited until Grandm_è_re was well down the hall until _damn her damn them all why could she not have one pure love that was hers and hers alone_ oh dear, she must talk to her grandmother. This latest tea service of hers simply fell apart at the slightest hint of pressure. She brushed shards of china from her lap for the staff to clean up. Seffie gazed soulfully out of the windows of her solar in the suite accorded to her in Grandm_è_re's palace over the cityscape of Paris. Somewhere to the east, Gil was performing the same heroics that had captured her heart when she had been assigned to spy on the Malfezium _bitch who would simply not die no matter how hard Seffie had worked at it_. What man could compare to Gil in manliness, integrity, and an adorable inability to charm the female sex that meant that she had not even had to have the other potential rivals to her undying love killed? He was everything that her vast extended family of schemers and backstabbing connivers was not. How she longed to run off to be by his side to shield him with her diplomatic skills and a small but effective network of assassins who would remove any obstacles from his way before he even knew they existed. Instead, some lucky chit had been photographed in his arms as he had carried her away from the rampaging Slaver Wasps that had boiled out from the engine that the Tyrant of Beetleburg had so foolishly brought into a lab in the center of his town.

_Merde_. Grandmamma would likely have her propositioned by virile footmen if Seffie refused to be the dutiful grand-daughter. Well. There were any number of constant bachelors whose company she enjoyed who could play the lover until such time as Grandp_è_re and the rest of the Knights of Jove thought she was done with Gil. A deliciously evil thought came to her as she thought of Captain Hawkins of the _Mopey Tortoise_. Jeanne had cheerfully propositioned her during that failed plan to attract Gil's attention as a damsel in distress taken by pirates. Zola _that pustule on the face of reality_ had distracted Gil from the arranged abduction by that entire affair involving the giant gerbils. Seffie had almost taken Jeanne up on the offer. But she had preferred to keep matters friendly rather than _intime_. Hawkins was both competent and discreet. She was a valuable future asset. The complications of a tryst with Jeanne would not be worth it if her services were required. Still. Perhaps a woman, if not Colette or Jeanne? A wicked smile played over Seffie's lips. It might be time to don a domino mask and venture into certain clubs in the Pigalle.

There was a mew.

Minou in her French maid's uniform and leopard's pelt immaculately tongue-groomed presented a silver tray with a message.

_Niece, time has caught up to me. Would you arrange for one Madmoiselle Clay to be met at the Gare d'Orsay? She is to be my new secretary on the advice of an old student of mine. She will be arriving on the Corbettite train from Bucarest at twelve-hundred._

Dear oncle Tick-tock. For a Spark who specialized in temporal mechanics, Dio Zardeliv had the worst grasp of time of anyone she had ever known. The family suspected he had chosen his obscure field to finally to be on time for once as for the lack of rivals. Seffie was about to write a note to have one of the staff sent out when a whim came upon her. Why not herself? It was, after all, a lovely March day in the loveliest city in the World. Leaping up, she perused her wardrobe for something suitable to greet her Uncle Tick-Tock's new clockwinder. She rejected her usual finery. Seffie felt like a walk rather than asking Gorgo to ready the Jolene. This Miss Clay was very much likely not of the nobility. Her uncle was not nearly prestigious enough to attract a secretary of such status. She really was not in a mood to overawe some back-country girl from the far side of Transylvania. Seffie flipped through the disguise portion of her wardrobe to select a proper persona: a touch threadbare, a bit gaudy, the sort worn by a student of reasonable means who might have been tasked by Professor Zardeliv to bring her to the Institute of the Extraordinary. Seffie had done enough surveillance of Gil in such outfits that she had a fair few ready. She did pick out one in the white-and-blues that suited her unusually pale complexion and blue eyes the best.

The bite of the March air through the fashionably-frayed greatcoat woke her from the last vestiges of her blues. Grandmamma was right. Life was meant to be lived. She would merely have to lie low before she continued her plots to seduce Gil. Seffie smiled as she walked alone--aside from Varpa shadowing her, of course--through the streets of Paris. Seffie had grown up chasing after her elder brother all over the Refuge of Storms and the mountains surrounding the Blitzengaard fortress. Ten years under Grandm_è_re's strict tutelage had included many a ballet lesson to teach her grace and posture. No coddled lady was she to faint at a brisk pace set amid the teeming crowds intent on a million different things. Although, naturally she could play the part long enough to slide in a knife when need be. The people around her saw nothing except a student out and about on the Right Bank--no doubt coming back from Montmartre's bohemian pleasures--to the student-haunted Left Bank. The cane with all its very useful and deadly functions concealed in the ebony shaft was just the sort of masculine affectation a student such as herself might carry.

She waved to the gargoyles atop Notre Dame who twisted to watch her pass over the Ile de la Cité. As she crossed the bridge, Varpa slipped an intelligence file disguised as a textbook into Seffie's hand. The Knight on duty would have already compiled the relevant information from the Institute of the Extraordinary's files along with whatever information was in Grandm_è_re's. Let's see-- Seffie blinked. Saint Teodora, she knew this new minion of her uncle's! She had been rather blurred in that photograph. But this was the girl who _how dare she_ had been in Gil's arms during the Hive Engine incident in Beetleburg. The information on Agatha Clay was fairly sparse--the adopted daughter of a construct blacksmith and his wife who Tarsus Beetle had granted early entrance to Transylvania Polygnostic and a position as his personal secretary. Seffie raised a brow when she saw the rather lacklustre grades and reports of clumsiness. Hmmmph. Either the girl was a bastard daughter. Or else she had been picked for bent-over-the-desk duty. Well, Miss Clay would not have to suffer such from her uncle. He might have eyes. But he kept his hands occupied with the _demimondaines_ that he was wont to associate with after hours.

Well, obviously Gil had not deemed her important enough. So no threat there. Still, Seffie decided to stay sociable to...make sure.

The Gare D'Orsay was a secondary terminus for overflow from the other stations. It was both train station and art gallery built on the ruins of an old Valois cadet branch palace. The stained glass windows above the concourse set above the tracks running below the station were set as an arch of steel and glass. Renoir had designed the scenes depicting Andronicus Valois accepting the Muses from Van Rijn. Dear cousin Tarvek had often spent hours staring up at them after yet another incident that Gil had sucked him into. On the walls and on plinths scattered about the concourse were various pieces of modern art. The Impressionists and the work of Rodin dominated the works on display. Seffie checked her pocket watch. Fashionably late, of course. This Clay girl could not have gone far, though. Quite the small-town girl from the foothills of the Carpathians, was she. She was likely clutching her purse and staring gobsmacked at everything. Seffie should take her aside to calm her and _ask for every detail of how it felt to have Gil`s arms tight about her_ slowly introduce her to the metropolis that was Paris.

Then she heard the music.

Seffie did not wear her heart on her sleeve. Martellus was quite wrong about that. She only seemed to in order to present a fake target. She still knew herself plagued by that old Valois curse of romance. She could not resist something true and beautiful out in the world. There was so much artifice that something honestly poured out from the heart stole hers as easily as a Smoke Knight putting a dagger into a kidney. The acoustics of the Gare d'Orsay were magnificent. The notes of the grand piano by one wall set out for public use carried clear as the bells of Notre Dame. Agatha Clay sat before the keyboard with a face turned up with eyes closed. She was dressed in a most dreadfully proper outfit of green tweed and prim shirtwaist. Seffie absently noted that the clawmarks of warrior slave wasps were detectible where the long dress has been sewn together. Her boots were heavy, clunky things meant for the lab rather than the fashion-mad streets of Paris. It did not matter what the frame was. The beauty of her face alight with joy and talent was enough to set Seffie's pulse racing.

The fingers stilled as the light died out.

Wincing, Agatha Clay rubbed her forehead as her eyes seemed to glaze over.

She stared up at Seffie.

"Um, yes?" Agatha Clay asked. "Is there a problem?"

"Of course not." Seffie had a task to do. Oh yes! "Let me introduce myself. Professor Zardilev sent me to bring you to your quarters."

"I have housing?" Agatha rubbed her head again. "I was going to sleep here at the Corbettite hostel until I found something--"

"Nonsense!" Seffie found herself saying. "Why, I am your new roomate! Sophie Lavois, at your service."

What--

What had she just--

"Good to meet you." Agatha picked up a battered leather valise. "Well, I suppose we she go home, then."

_What was she doing_? Xerxsephnia von Blitzengaard screamed at herself as she frantically signed to Varpa to _do something quickly._


End file.
